Hell Night. Don Pendleton

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jerry Van Cook for his contribution to this work.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Epilogue

      Prologue

      The quiet ambience of the small Parisian café was in direct contrast to the proposed topics of discussion—mass murder and destruction.

      Beneath the large shade umbrella on the patio, Benjamin Franklin Davis shifted his chair slightly to block out the setting sun. Behind him, a good-looking Frenchwoman sat on a tall stool, a guitar in her lap, singing a folk song. Although he couldn’t understand the words, Davis listened to her voice. Not bad. Not bad at all.

      Davis focused his attention on the café’s door to the patio as his contact arrived. Davis nodded. He would have known the man even if Ibrahim Nasab hadn’t told him he’d be wearing a brown sport coat and an open-collared white shirt. The look in Nasab’s eyes gave him away as a man accustomed to violence.

      It was the same look Davis saw in the mirror each morning when he shaved.

      Nasab walked to the table and pulled out the chair next to Davis just as the sun sank below the horizon. The woman on the stool continued to strum her guitar, her voice low and husky.

      “Do you speak French?” Ibrahim Nasab asked as he settled into his seat.

      “I speak English,” Davis almost spit. “The American version. Or I don’t speak at all.”

      For a brief moment, Nasab’s eyes filled with hatred, but then the Arab forced a smile. “Then we will speak English,” he said in a thick Middle Eastern accent. “For we have much to discuss.”

      Davis nodded. “Indeed we do,” he said. He leaned forward, closer to Nasab so he could lower his voice when he spoke. The odor of some pungent spice filled his nostrils. He was telling himself to ignore it when another pretty Frenchwoman with long brown hair approached their table. She said something Davis couldn’t understand, but Nasab answered for them.

      “I have ordered you another cup of American coffee,” the Arab said when she’d left again. “And one for myself.”

      Davis nodded, cleared his throat, then glanced around him to make sure no one was paying them any attention. An elderly couple three tables away were the only other patrons on the sidewalk patio, and they hardly looked like potential police or intelligence agents. Davis scanned the office building across the street. Surveillance equipment had become so sophisticated in the past few years that a hidden microphone might be trained on them from any of the windows.

      But that wasn’t the case, and he knew it. He had chosen this café at random less than ten minutes ago, and given Nasab the name and address by cell phone. Even if the French or the Americans or the Arabs were on to them, they wouldn’t have had time to get their listening gear set up.

      For a moment, the two men sat silently, sizing each other up. Then Nasab asked quietly, “Do you really think this can work?” He had leaned in slightly, too, and if the look on his face meant anything, the movement was as distasteful to him as it had been to Davis. “Our philosophies of life are so very different.”

      “Yes,” Davis said. “They are different. But if North Korea can work with Iran and Syria for a common goal, I don’t see why my American Rough Riders and Hamas can’t do the same thing.”

      Nasab leaned back in his chair as a gentle breeze began to blow along the sidewalk. The woman on the stool behind Davis continued to sing.

      “How do you propose that we join forces?” Nasab asked.

      “I see things going down in two parts,” Davis said. “The first part will consist of the same things we’ve been doing separately all along. Bank robberies, random machine-gunnings at shopping malls and other areas where there are lots of easy targets, small bombs and the like.” He glanced at his watch and calculated the time difference between where he sat and Kansas City, Missouri. “Even now, some of my men are preparing to rob a bank later in the day.” He rested his arm on the table. “We’ll make sure everyone knows who it is behind the robbery, and we’ll make sure there are plenty of bodies left at the scene.”

      Nasab nodded, then said out loud what all terrorists, the world over, knew in their hearts. “Each death sends horror through a thousand still-beating hearts.”

      “That’s right,” Davis confirmed. “And in addition to the strikes you’ve already set up here in Europe, I’d like you to send some of your men to the U.S.” He glanced at the Hamas man’s sport coat, slacks and the rest of his Western attire. “And I’d like them to wear more-traditional Islamic clothing than you have on, if you don’t mind.”

      “We can disguise ourselves as Christians and Jews when necessary,” Nasab said. “Won’t robes and headdresses draw attention to us?”

      Davis almost burst out laughing. “Of course it will,” he said. “And that’s exactly what we want. It’ll scare the hell out of people, but they won’t get in your way. You’ve heard of political correctness?”

      Nasab nodded. “Of course.”

      “Well,” Davis went on, “the average American doesn’t know the difference between the Muslim sects, and they’ll be so afraid of offending you that you could probably hide a howitzer under your robe and no one would say anything.” He stopped talking long enough to pull a French cigarette from a crumpled package he’d purchased the day before at a tobacco shop. “They can call it political correctness if they want,” he said as he lit the tip, then cleared his throat. “I call it stupidity. But it’s a stupidity we can use to our own advantage.”

      Nasab smiled his understanding.

      “We’ll get the anthrax-mail thing going again,” Davis said. “But on a larger scale than whoever did it before. I don’t know who it was, but it was a damn good tactic. I want people afraid to even open their electric bill.”

      “That is easily accomplished as soon as my men and I arrive in the U.S.,” Nasab said. “We already have a large supply of anthrax at our disposal. And much of it is already in the possession of our cells in America.”

      “Good,” Davis said. “And I want to begin a food-poisoning campaign. It’s easy enough for someone to walk through the fruit-and-vegetable section of any supermarket and inject fresh foods with the poison of their choice.” He stopped talking as the waitress set their coffee on the round metal table. He didn’t open his mouth again until she had turned to go back into the café and was well out of earshot. “Even one death like this’ll make all of America afraid to eat anything that didn’t come out of an airtight can.”

      Nasab smiled. “I like the plan so far,” he said. “Then, perhaps once they have quit eating fresh fruits, vegetables, meat and other foods, we can plant men in the canneries. Your Americans will be less suspect than my darker-skinned brethren, and they can poison the canned food, making your countrymen afraid to eat anything.” He paused, chuckled and took a sip of coffee. When he had replaced the coffee cup in its saucer, he said, “And what is the final part of your